We have directly observed spin-dependent transport of single cesium atoms in a 1D optical lattice. A superposition of two circularly polarized standing waves is generated from two counter propagating, linearly polarized laser beams. Rotation of one of the polarizations by π causes displacement of the σ+- and σ–-lattices by one lattice site. Unidirectional transport over several lattice sites is achieved by rotating the polarization back and forth and flipping the spin after each transport step. We have analyzed the transport efficiency over 10 and more lattice sites, and discussed and quantified relevant error sources.

We prepare arbitrary patterns of neutral atoms in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice with single-site precision using microwave radiation in a magnetic field gradient. We give a detailed account of the current limitations and propose methods to overcome them. Our results have direct relevance for addressing planes, strings or single atoms in higher-dimensional optical lattices for quantum information processing or quantum simulations with standard methods in current experiments. Furthermore, our findings pave the way for arbitrary single-qubit control with single-site resolution.

We overcome the diffraction limit in fluorescence imaging of neutral atoms in a sparsely filled one-dimensional optical lattice. At a periodicity of 433 nm, we reliably infer the separation of two atoms down to nearest neighbors. We observe light induced losses of atoms occupying the same lattice site, while for atoms in adjacent lattice sites, no losses due to light induced interactions occur. Our method points towards characterization of correlated quantum states in optical lattice systems with filling factors of up to one atom per lattice site.

We control the quantum mechanical motion of neutral atoms in an optical lattice by driving microwave transitions between spin states whose trapping potentials are spatially offset. Control of this offset with nanometer precision allows for adjustment of the coupling strength between different motional states, analogous to an adjustable effective Lamb-Dicke factor. This is used both for efficient one-dimensional sideband cooling of individual atoms to a vibrational ground state population of 97% and to drive coherent Rabi oscillation between arbitrary pairs of vibrational states. We further show that microwaves can drive well resolved transitions between motional states in maximally offset, shallow lattices, and thus in principle allow for coherent control of long-range quantum transport.

The quantum walk is the quantum analog of the well-known random walk, which forms the basis for models and applications in many realms of science. Its properties are markedly different from the classical counterpart and might lead to extensive applications in quantum information science. In our experiment, we implemented a quantum walk on the line with single neutral atoms by deterministically delocalizing them over the sites of a one-dimensional spin-dependent optical lattice. With the use of site-resolved fluorescence imaging, the final wave function is characterized by local quantum state tomography, and its spatial coherence is demonstrated. Our system allows the observation of the quantum-to-classical transition and paves the way for applications, such as quantum cellular automata.

Polarization rotation of weak probe light induced by circularly polarized strong coupling light in a Λ configuration is studied. We use spin-polarized cold cesium atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap to remove complications from Zeeman distribution, Doppler broadening, and collisional decoherence. By using a very low probe intensity and short illumination period we work in a strictly linear regime. The probe and the coupling fields are optically phase locked to eliminate phase fluctuation and consequent atomic decoherence. Using this idealized situation we clarify the roles of optically induced Faraday rotation, circular dichroism, and electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in determining the final state of the probe light. In particular, we identify an experimental situation where the roles of atomic coherence and EIT are important.

We propose a way to eliminate the inhomogeneous broadening for a ground-state hyperfine transition of an alkali metal atom in an optical trap by using a properly polarized trapping field. The ac Stark shift contribution from the vector polarizability has opposite sign for a pair of ground hyperfine levels. It can be used to eliminate the inhomogeneous broadening from the difference in the scalar polarizbilities due to the hyperfine splitting. The size of the vector term is determined by the polarization state of the trapping field, and by controlling the polarization tightly one can achieve a very narrow linewidth. We estimate required tolerance in the polarization control to achieve 1-Hz linewidth for a specific case of a cesium atom. This proposal has significant implications for an electric dipole moment measurement using cesium atoms and quantum information processing using an optical lattice.

We demonstrate a type of chiral effect of an atomic medium. Polarization rotation of a probe beam is observed only when both a magnetic field and a linearly polarized coupling beam are present. We compare it with other chiral effects like optical activity, the Faraday effect, and the optically induced Faraday effect from the viewpoint of spatial inversion and time reversal transformations. As a theoretical model we consider a five-level configuration involving the cesium D2 transition. We use spin-polarized cold cesium atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap to measure the polarization rotation versus probe detuning. The result shows reasonable agreement with a calculation from the master equation of the five-level configuration.

A quantitative study on characteristics of a magneto-optical trap with a single or a few atoms is presented. A very small number of 85Rb atoms were trapped in a micron-size magneto-optical trap with a high magnetic-field gradient. In order to find the optimum condition for a single-atom trap, we have investigated how the number of atoms and the size of atomic cloud change as various experimental parameters, such as a magnetic-field gradient and the trapping laser intensity and detuning. The averaged number of atoms was measured very accurately with a calibration procedure based on the single-atom saturation curve of resonance fluorescence. In addition, the number of atoms in a trap could be controlled by suppressing stochastic loading events by means of a real-time active feedback on the magnetic-field gradient.

We have measured the loading and loss rates in a magneto-optical trap only with a few atoms by directly counting atom-number changing events. Unambiguous formulas are presented for the calculation of those rates from a step-wise time sequence of the fluorescence of the trapped atoms. With a recently developed atom-number feedback technique we could efficiently measure the loading rate as a function of the magnetic field gradient for the initial number of trapped atoms of zero. We could also measure the one- and two-atom loss rates as functions of the trap laser intensity for a precisely prepared initial number of trapped atoms. Each of these rates has been measured independently by directly counting the corresponding atom-number-changing events, without any influence from or inference to the other rates.

We have analyzed the statistical distribution of the fluorescence signal levels in a magneto-optical trap containing a few atoms and observed that it strongly depends on the relative size of the bin time with respect to the trap decay time. We derived analytic expressions for the signal distributions in two limiting cases, long and short bin time limits, and found good agreement with numerical simulations performed regardless of the size of the bin time. We found an optimal size of the bin time for minimizing the probability of indeterminate atom numbers while providing accurate information on the instantaneous number of atoms in the trap. These theoretical results are compared with actual experimental data. We observed super-Poisson counting statistics for the fluorescence from trapped atoms, which might be attributed to uncorrelated motion of trapped atoms in the inhomogeneous magnetic field in the trap.

A few math atoms were trapped in a micron-size magneto-optical trap with a high quadrupole magnetic-field gradient and the number of atoms was precisely controlled by suppressing stochastic loading and loss events via real-time feedback on the magnetic-field gradient. The measured occupation probability of a single atom was as high as 99%. Atoms up to five were also trapped with high occupation probabilities. The present technique could be used to make a deterministic atom source.

We investigate an all-optical, pump-probe scheme for the polarization rotation of linearly polarized light in an atomic medium. A circularly polarized control light is shown to play the role of a static magnetic field via a Zeeman-like ac Stark interaction and to induce the optical Faraday rotation (OFR) of the probe light. As a model system, we consider a stationary atom with nS-nP-nD level scheme without electronic or nuclear spin. In addition to OFR, we find that electromagnetically induced transparency for the three-level atom and circular dichroism also contribute to the polarization change. We characterize these three effects over different frequency ranges through an explicit calculation of the fractional transmission and the output polarization of the probe light. Our results are compared with the nS-nP-(n+1)S scheme, which has been previously studied both theoretically and experimentally. We also compare the optically induced Faraday effect with the Faraday effect from a static magnetic field. We propose an experimental situation to test the theory and address the possibility of producing an atomic medium that is both optically active and transparent.

We report our study of the magneto-optical effect in a strictly linear regime on spin-polarized cold cesium atoms. Due to the low intensity and the short illumination period of the probe beam, less than 7.5% of the sample atoms change their states by absorbing probe photons. We produce a medium of atoms at rest in either the 6S1∕2,F=3,mF=0 or 6S1∕2,F=3,mF=3 state by optically pumping atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap. We use the D1 resonance with large lower and upper state hyperfine splittings as a probe transition to avoid hyperfine mixing from the Zeeman interaction. Under this idealized situation we measure the Stokes parameters in order to find the polarization rotation and circular dichroism experienced by the probe light. We find that there are qualitative differences between the results for the mF=0 and mF=3 cases. While dispersion and consequent Faraday rotation play a dominant role when the atoms are in the mF=0 state, it is dissipation and circular dichroism that are important when they are in the mF=3 state. Similarly, while the size of the Faraday rotation and the circular dichroism for the mF=0 case scales linearly with the applied magnetic field, for the mF=3 case it is the shift of the probe polarization change versus frequency that is linearly proportional to the magnetic field strength.